She walked downstairs and there he was, staring at her. He stepped toward her, examined her face: concealer, mascara, rouge.

“Take it off,” Bradley Cooper told Lady Gaga.

She noticed something in his hand. It was a makeup wipe. With it, he erased the colors from her forehead down to her chin.

This is the woman Cooper wanted in his film, “A Star Is Born.” Not the pop star masked with face paint and headdresses and hairpieces. Just Stefani Germanotta. “Completely open,” he said. “No artifice.”

Another option here might be to say, "Hey, Stefani, I'd really like this character to not wear makeup, could you remove yours in your preferred way on your own?" but nope!! Cooper just had to insert himself into this Very Special narrative and invade her personal space. And let's not even address the tired idea that a woman wearing her regular, everyday makeup is a "mask," because oh, there's more!

Elsewhere in the interview, Cooper says if acting is "something [Gaga] wants to pursue" he will "just have been lucky to have been part of her story," as if she hasn't already played key roles in American Horror Story and essentially treated all of her shows as live theater.